Families could see the number of flights they can take rationed in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Gordon Brown's "environment tsar" has warned.

Lord Turner, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, said people would be given personal flight limits to lower pollution from the aviation industry.

"We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense, with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner," he told the Commons environmental audit committee.

Lord Turner, whose committee is investigating whether the air industry can meet a target of reducing emissions to below 2005 levels by 2050, said the restriction may need to become permanent.

He added: "It is at least possible that we will come back and say, 'Given the technological position ... we think this is doable with the first flight allocation but we think the second allocation may prove undoable'."

The comments echo a suggestion made two years ago by Tim Yeo, a Conservative MP and the chairman of the environment audit committee.

He said there was "no reason at all why people should fly around the UK" and that domestic flights should be taxed almost out of existence.

The Conservatives in 2007 briefly advocated a policy of giving people an annual allowance of short-haul flights, after which they would attract progressively higher taxes. It was quietly dropped after widespread criticism.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said of Lord Turner's suggestion: "There is an absolute need to recognise the serious climate change implications of aviation but Forties-style rationing is not the way forward."